Movie reviews

POVEDA

Watchable. The situation in Spain in the first few decades of the 20th century was the opposite of the current situation in Poland. While many Polish women protest or are against religious education at schools, a century ago it created an opportunity for Spanish women to get education and employment guaranteeing independence. For a larger part the movie's very pleasant. Priest Pedro Poveda keeps setting up schools with only minor problems in his way, sometimes comical, e.g. when a girl's father thinks his daughter's been kidnapped by the villain priest and padre Pedro introduces himself to him. The ending is dramatic though - the radicals murder him at the onset of the Civil War in 1936. The movie's uneven, especially the fragmented conversation in detention is totally unnecessary.


FRANCOPHONIE FESTIVAL

HOCHELAGA, TERRE DES ÂMES (HOCHELAGA, LAND OF SOULS)

Watchable. The history of the beginnings of Montreal and of Canada shown through a series of separate, protracted scenes from different periods. Some native languages, like Mohawk and Algonquin are prominent in the dialogues. Characteristic music and moments of sudden silence play a role too. One shocking visual effect gets amplified by subsequent silence but that takes place early on and the whole film is just a revision of the history of the region which could have been presented more engagingly.

LE FILS DE JEAN (A KID)

Watchable. An adult man without a father gets maneuvered into a trip which makes him experience life with two different families that he never had. That's the only thing that stands out in the otherwise mundane story.


NIEWIDZIALNE (THE INVISIBLES)

Watchable. Lots of conversations of really stupid people, poverty, alcoholism, sexual frustration and harassment, a sweat shop - nothing but pathology, all of that with scenes interrupted by prolonged blackouts filled only with dreadful 40s-like string music - clearly a remnant of it being originally a theatre play. Luck is within the protagonists' reach but they can't see it. The final explanation of what happened to the children is heart-rending. Yet the very last scene shows the scriptwriter ran out of ideas. The story focuses on misery and such depravation that even a bus ride is too costly, throwing in elements of the parallel world where people go shopping and pay with plastic. Domestic violence and inaccessibility of abortion are also key. Altogether it's unpleasant, visibly and audibly experimental and a bit theatre-like but with some seeds of truth and a loud voice in support of women's rights.